Alice Goldberger was 48 years old on August 15, 1945. Standing on the tarmac at the airfield in Crosby-on-Eden, close to Carlisle, Goldberger, a childcare specialist who had come to Britain in 1939 as a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, was waiting to start a radical new work project.
She had forgotten her birthday since she was both so nervous and so thrilled. She only considered this as she gazed up at the sky for aeroplanes.
Working at Anna Freud's War Nurseries (Anna Freud was Sigmund Freud's daughter and the field of child psychoanalysis's founder), Goldberger had spent the war years in London tending to small children made homeless by bombing.
Although she had years of expertise dealing with psychologically challenged children, she still worried about whether the work ahead of her would challenge her abilities to the utmost. Alice was part of a team tasked with helping 300 orphaned Jewish child survivors of Nazi concentration camps start a new life. The planes she awaited were bringing these children to Britain.